Years ago, I blogged about a couple of Windows weaving programs that can run on Linux with WINE. WINE is a program that creates a sandbox with conditions favorable to Windows, so that many Windows programs will run in it happily. Many won't, but it's worth a try to see what happens.
Two of the programs I tried back then were DB-Weave and WeaveDesign. That was several computers ago, so I recently downloaded both programs to this computer and, with my table loom in mind, took a look at each of them again. To run WINE, I used PlayOnLinux. PlayOnLinux is a user friendly graphical interface for WINE (there's also PlayOnMac for Mac users.)
- Liftplan option for table looms
- Can export WIF files
- Can print drafts
- can convert tie-up to liftplan
DB-Weave is geared toward dobby looms so it offers a pegplan option rather than a liftplan. It will run in WINE, although I found that the desktop icon took me to its folder where I had to select the exe file to run it.
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| Opening DB-WEAVE |
I took a lot of screenshots previously (which you can see here), so in this post, I'll just focus on the things I mentioned above.
I started with the new draft option, selected pegplan, and just doodled to see what it would do.
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| Pegplan will obviously work as a liftplan! |
However, when I unchecked the pegplan mode,
It removed the pegplan, but there was no option for tie-up and treadling.
When I imported a WIF file. . .
. . . it gave me the treading, tie-up, and treadling, but not the drawdown and original color palette. Nor did it give me the name of the file. There may be a way to show these, but I couldn't figure it out.
It will export and print WIF files.
It also has a computer interface option for dobby looms, which I didn't look at.
While it does more than WeaveDreamer, I didn't find DB-WEAVE to be terribly intuitive. I had to refer back to my 2008 review to figure some things out. (If you click that last link, you'll see a lot of screenshots.) Between that and the way it imports WIF files, it isn't a program I'll use.
It may do better on a Windows computer! And it's free, so it might be an option for a weaver on a budget.
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